Book 32, Question 16
Why do turtles snip their food with a beak instead of teeth?
Turtles have no teeth.
Their jaws are covered with a hard, sharp-edged beak made of keratin, the same material as your fingernails. The beak works like scissors to snip plants or bite food into pieces. Beak shapes vary: a snapping turtle has a hooked beak, and a tortoise has a flat one for munching leaves. Birds have beaks, too, but birds evolved theirs separately.